The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden long on a

hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a bicycle and talk to

young Flippard will try the toughest constitution; or perhaps the sight

of the cool bracken grove, whence 'those two' were coming down, excited

her envy. The cool bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak

boughs for roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn,

and the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,

while the deer stole by. The bracken grove of irretrievable delights,

of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and earth! The bracken

grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump fauns leaping around the

silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph at summer dusk.

This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at June's 'at home,'

was not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal. Her own marriage,

poor thing, had not been successful, but having had the good sense and

ability to force her husband into pronounced error, she herself had

passed through the necessary divorce proceedings without incurring

censure.

She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in one of

those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments, are gathered

incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief recreation out of

business hours is the discussion of each other's affairs.

Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was bored, for

Flippard was a wit. To see 'those two' in so unlikely a spot was quite a

merciful 'pick-me-up.'

At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.

This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing eye

and shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering the ends of

Providence.

With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost distressing

power of taking care of herself. She had done more, perhaps, in her way

than any woman about town to destroy the sense of chivalry which

still clogs the wheel of civilization. So smart she was, and spoken of

endearingly as 'the little MacAnder!'

Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman's Club, but was by no

means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was always thinking of

her rights. She took her rights unconsciously, they came natural to

her, and she knew exactly how to make the most of them without exciting

anything but admiration amongst that great class to whom she was

affiliated, not precisely perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and

the true, the secret gauge, a sense of property.